The long term goal of the Morehouse School of Medicine is to achieve a level of biomedical research capability and productivity that is equal to that of any institution of comparable size and mission. Toward that goal, the funds requested in this five year renewal application will be used to further develop the institutional infrastructure for biomedical research and the research faculty, to foster the growth of three areas of collaborative research focused on health problems that disproportionately affect underserved populations, (cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases and neurosciences), and to conduct research on eight specific problems related to the disease, AIDS. Accordingly, the specific aims are to: further develop and maintain core and shared use research facilities that provide antibody preparation and immunological procedures, molecular genetic technologies, electrophysiology (patch clamp) analyses, fluorescence activated cell sorting, flow cytometry, electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, digitized video image analysis, HPLC, two-dimensional PAGE an digitized gel analysis, computer resources and research support services; hire and provide research start up support for one faculty molecular immunologist; continue to initiate research by three groups of faculty investigators.